Whiskey House of Kentucky begins production
From the minds behind Bardstown Bourbon Company, Whiskey House will focus on contract production.
Whiskey House of Kentucky has successfully hit its deadline of 1 July to begin production. The 176-acre campus is located in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and will be entirely dedicated to contract distillation.
“Thanks to our incredible team, construction partners, service providers and vendors, we’ve delivered the most advanced distillery in the United States in just over two years,” said co-founder and CEO David Mandell.
“Our state-of-the-art facility not only provides unmatched quality, flexibility and production capabilities, but we’ve also assembled the best team in American whiskey to deliver exceptional customer service for our exclusive brand partners.”
In October 2023, Mandell, John Hargrove and Daniel Linde, founders of Kentucky’s Bardstown Bourbon Company, announced a US$350 million pledge over 10 years. Founded in 2022, Whiskey House is the first distillery specifically designed to focus solely on large-scale, flexible, contract production. It will have no brands of its own and its campus will be closed to the public, removing any potential conflicts of interest between the company and its customers.
The Whiskey House campus includes plans for 33 traditional rickhouses capable of holding 41,496 barrels; a 50,000-square-foot palletised warehouse; a spent-grain processing facility; a bottling facility; and a rail system. The 48-inch Vendome still is accompanied by 14 33,000-gallon closed-top fermenters. It plans on doubling capacity from 112,000 barrels annually to 224,000 by 2027.
“Whiskey House truly sets a new high bar for advanced manufacturing in the whiskey industry,” Hargrove said. ”We’ve created the most flexible distillation system in the country, capable of producing excellent whiskey while enabling tremendous customisation at the same time.”
Kentucky-based contract distilling is on the rise; earlier this week, Eastern Light Distilling broke ground on a new distillery campus that is expected to be completed in late 2025.
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